I always try to answer these questions drawing on resources from the central teachings of the Christian tradition, though I'm also not averse to giving my considered judgment on controversial issues or even wading into the middle of a debate when I think a lot is at stake. Hence I will start this blog by posting material I use in classes to present fundamental Christian teachings like the doctrine of the Trinity—which, oddly, most Christians have never been taught. (It's extraordinary, and encouraging to me as a teacher, how hungry people are to learn these things!) But then I will proceed to more controversial topics, like why the recent evangelical attempts to revive subordinationism in the doctrine of the Trinity are a deep mistake.
So, welcome to the blog.
Phillip Cary
Dr. Cary,
ReplyDeleteI am the senior pastor at Yates Baptist Church in Durham, NC and I am leading my staff through a reading and discussion of your book "Good News..." I love the book and have recommended it to many people, but some of my fellow readers are struggling with parts of it.
A question that emerges is "Can we not hear God outside or above Scripture? What about when Elijah heard God in the gentle whisper? (1 Kgs 19:12) And then the question emerges doesn't God "call" people specifically into vocational ministry? I would appreciate any answers you can give. Thanks.
Like the 16th century Reformers, I think sola scriptura (“Scripture alone”) is really, really good news. It means I don’t have to obey all these other voices, including the voices of my own heart (which I should listen to--in order to gain self-knowledge--but not obey as if they were God). It would be awful if we had to listen for God in our own hearts; it would be a cause of unlimited anxiety, doubt and self-deception.
ReplyDeleteIt's wonderful that instead God speaks to us today, as he has always done, in the way that a real person speaks. For real people don’t speak inside our hearts. Even the “still small voice” that Elijah heard came from outside his own heart.
So we should listen to God speak in the words of the prophets and apostles, as given to us in Holy Scripture, which means not just by reading the book to ourselves but by hearing, singing, teaching and preaching it in the life of the church. So the Word of God is not simply confined to the page; it does get out and into the hearts of his people and in their life together in the Body of Christ. That’s where to go if you want to hear what the Spirit has to say today.
Likewise, it is in the company of other Christians in the church that you’re in good position to find your calling from God--not by listening to your heart as if it contained an infallible voice which will make your decisions for you, as if you were not a moral agent responsible for your own decisions.
Glad you like the book, by the way. And more important, I hope it genuinely helps your staff see and rejoice in the good news of the Gospel of Christ. Grace and peace to you all!
ReplyDeleteThanks for the helpful response. We have 6 ministers and 2 other administrative staff reading the book, one chapter per week. I've already read the book once and now rereading with them. We may occasionally post questions or comments as we work our way through the book. By the way, I preached a sermon entitled "Being Spiritual Means You Don't Have to Find God's Will" that emerged from my theological reflection on your book. I had several members of my congregation say, "I wish I had heard that sermon 30 years ago." Thanks. Don Gordon
ReplyDeleteGlad the book is proving to be helpful!
ReplyDeleteProfessor Cary,
ReplyDeleteMy wife and I are enjoying your Great Course on the history of Christian theology, which raises many questions for us. We're about half way through. So I was delighted to find this blog.
Let me say first that we are not believers in any theist tradition but we respect those who do believe, especially when they do not come across as hypocrites. We're trying to learn this stuff because Christianity seems to be getting mixed more and more into secular affairs in our country, a la, Islam.
Okay, first question of what may be many we put to you:
What do Christians (of whatever stripe) say about whether they must follow the Mosaic law? I refer to Matthew 5:17 & 18.
There are an awful lot of "laws" laid out in books like Leviticus that I'm pretty sure most Christians today would find absurd or even horrific (e.g., the commandment to kill people who work on the sabbath).
Is there any branch of Christianity today that accepts the Sermon on the Mount as obligatory teaching?
Boyce Rensberger & Linda Thomas
New Midway, Maryland
The crucial issue about the Mosaic law in the New Testament is whether Gentiles need to follow it, once they have come to believe in the Messiah, Jesus, the King of the Jews. Paul said no, and his argument won the day.
ReplyDeleteJesus was speaking to a Jewish audience, which raises a different set of issues. His main point is that the justice or righteousness of the kingdom of God is much greater, not less, than that demanded by other Jewish movements of the day (see Matt. 5:20). He also affirmed that the Law given to Moses will endure, without one stroke of the pen being removed (5:18), which in an important sense is what remains true not only in Judaism but also in Christianity, which continues to regard the Jewish Bible or Old Testament as inspired Scripture, even though it is not binding on Gentiles (and never has been, in either Judaism or Christianity).
Dr. Cary,
ReplyDeleteI am enjoying your lectures on the history of Christian Theology! You are a very clear thinker and I really like your teaching style.
I read your article titled "Augustine and the Varieties of Monergism"
http://pontifications.wordpress.com/2008/01/08/augustine-and-the-varieties-of-monergism/
Do Arminians take prevenient grace to be a kind of operating grace or a cooperating grace? I believe Roger Olson maintains that prevenient grace is a kind of enabling grace which works from within a person, but that it is a resistible grace, which seems to suggest that it is a kind of cooperative grace. So I am not really sure how to categorize the Classical Arminian notion of prevenient grace (in terms of operative / cooperative grace).
Glad you like the lectures!
ReplyDeleteYou've got the Wesleyan-Arminian notion of grace right. It just doesn't map neatly onto Augustine's distinction. Co-operative grace, in Augustine, is basically equivalent to sanctifying grace in Protestant theology. It comes to us after faith and works with us (i.e., co-operates with us) to produce love and good works.
Operative grace simply works in us, prior to our co-operation. It works faith in us, which means it comes to us before we have faith--which is why it is called prevenient, from the Latin verb for "to come before" (praevenire, from which we get our word "prevent," which originally meant "to come before," which is why this is sometimes in older writers called "preventing grace").
Wesley agrees with Augustine that grace must come before faith, and thus he has a concept of prevenient grace, too. But for Wesley, in contrast to Augustine, this grace does not directly work faith in us. It just makes it possible for us to accept Christ in faith, which we couldn't do by our own natural powers. It functions as an offer and a possibility, but it's up to us to accept the offer.
So essentially what we have here is a disagreement about the nature of prevenient grace, the grace that comes to us before we have faith. Does it give us faith, or simply the ability to accept faith? Augustine says the first, Wesley the second. Wesley's prevenient grace is definitely resistible. So you could call Augustine's notion of prevenient grace irresistible, though that's not a term Augustine uses, because the point for him is that if God gives us this grace, we don't resist it at all, but are drawn to freely accept faith. In other words, if God gives us prevenient grace, then we not only CAN but DO accept faith, and we do so freely, of our own free will--for God's grace can inwardly turn our free will in the right direction without violating our freedom (Wesley and the Arminians think that's impossible, but Augustine doesn't. Behind this disagreement are two very different views about the nature of free will, as you can imagine).
Dr. Cary: I just finished your 1999? Great Courses lectures on Religion and Western Philosophy. I enjoyed them. I am curious about your understanding of Thomas Reid. His practical approach and religious history would seem to support your reformed epistemological approach. Others have suggested his thinking is being rediscovered. I am just now reading him. Also, I wondered about Tillich in your thinking. Glad to have found your scholarship and blog.
ReplyDeleteGlad you liked the lectures. I'm not an expert on Reid but my teacher, Nicholas Wolterstorff, is. At least, he wrote a book on Reid, titled Thomas Reid and the Story of Epistemology. Everything Wolterstorff writes is illuminating, so this is the first place I'd go for scholarship on Reid, especially if you're interested in Reformed Epistemology, of which Wolterstorff is a founding figure.
ReplyDeleteAs for Tillich, it turns out I am not a fan. It seems to me he empties Christian language of its content. For some folks Tillich's approach to the meaning of Christian symbols is a way of staying in the faith, and I can appreciate that. But for myself, if I were ever reduced to the position of finding Tillich's theology to be the best available approach, I would simply conclude that the Christian faith wasn't true and be done with it.
Hello, Professor Cary. We have listened to your Marten Luther lectures three times with friends and continue to learn more. You made a comment, something about the fiery torment of hell concept of judgment being a misconception. I've felt deep anxiety about this for the 50 years I've been a believer. I heard an analogy about boys pouring gasoline on a cat and lighting it on fire. We cringe, yet don't seem to question why we can believe our loving, just Father would do that to humans, for eternity. I am not a theologian and don't have the certainty that I can teach anything different than this traditional Christian view, but I know in my heart it's not right. Could you shed light on this for me?
ReplyDeleteBlessings,
Cheryl Colwell
Fire and brimstone (the old word for sulfur) make up a biblical image for the wrath of God, which is itself a biblical way of portraying the justice of God. We should let the image point us to the reality, not distract from it. Which is to say, when we fear God's judgment, it is God we fear, not literal fire and sulfur. And that means that the judge we fear is also the one who came to redeem us by his mercy incarnate. Jesus Christ our Lord is the judge of heaven and earth, and to him belongs mercy as well as wrath.
ReplyDeleteThe wrath will be like fire to the cruel and complacent, while the mercy will be like cool water in the desert to those who hunger and thirst for justice--the oppressed and the needy, and all those who pray for peace and love in the world.
We all have reason to fear, because of our own cruelty and complacency. But what we need not fear is that the end of the world is itself cruel, unjust and horrifying, a torture chamber for most of the human race. What CANNOT happen is that God would be cruel and unjust. We can be confident that all God does in the end will be worthy of praise. (If there's one thing the Bible is clear about, it's that).
So what we should not do is believe in a God we cannot help but think is cruel and unjust and merciless. That kind of belief will twist our souls into an ugly knot. We have a calling to live in hope, confident that our Lord will do all things well. So let us fear our good Lord, and love him as well, for he is both our judge and our redeemer.
The point about Luther was that when he imagined the judgment of God, he almost never thought of fire and literal torture. He imagined hearing a word of condemnation from God. That is what he found truly fearsome. Imagine hearing a word from your Creator, the one who made you and knows everything about you, better than you know yourself, and it is a word of rejection that stays at the center of your heart and your being forever: something like your Father saying, "I never knew you." That's what hell feels like for Luther.
ReplyDeleteBut now imagine our Lord saying to you: "Well done, good and faithful servant," in front of all the angels in the world. Heaven is a lot like that.